Last Dinosaur?

[Valka D'Ur]

Not trying to bring religion into it, but interesting, like 'Why are there adult T"Rex remains/bones but no young T'Rex remains?'

Can we just not go there? There is nothing to be gained by dragging the supernatural into a discussion of paleontology, particularly when the evidence is right in front of everyone.

 

[Lexicus]

Almost all dead dinos don't fossilize.

Yeah, but it is very unlikely that NO dinosaurs who died after the KT event would have fossilized. It may be that the fossils are out there, undiscovered, of course.

The term basically means something that was alive during the time of the dinosaurs and superficially is unchanged.

No, it doesn't. Living dinosaur means birds. The term you are looking for is probably living fossil.

Not trying to bring religion into it, but interesting, like 'Why are there adult T"Rex remains/bones but no young T'Rex remains?'

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/...ally-are-teenage-t-rex-dinosaur-growth-rates/

Five seconds of research was sufficient to establish that there are young T-rex remains.

 

[EgonSpengler]

iirc, the family of gators, crocs & caimans are one of the oldest animals that still exist in pretty much the same form. I don't think they predate the asteroid impact, though.

 

[Lexicus]

iirc, the family of gators, crocs & caimans are one of the oldest animals that still exist in pretty much the same form. I don't think they predate the asteroid impact, though.

Crocodilians are actually a little older than the dinosaurs. Notably they are survivors of both the K-T event and the Triassic-Jurassic event a little over 200 million years ago. I'm not sure how similar those old crocodiles were to the ones living today, though.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Crocodilians are actually a little older than the dinosaurs. Notably they are survivors of both the K-T event and the Triassic-Jurassic event a little over 200 million years ago. I'm not sure how similar those old crocodiles were to the ones living today, though.

Wikipedia says alligators are 38 million years old and crocodiles are 55 million years old. I'm surprised gators aren't the older species, because those are the ones that can survive freezing weather. I would've thought that feature contributed to the family of species surviving the asteroid impact.

 

[Samson]

iirc, the family of gators, crocs & caimans are one of the oldest animals that still exist in pretty much the same form. I don't think they predate the asteroid impact, though.

The Coelacanth are famously "living fossils", having been considered to have evolved into roughly its current form approximately 400 million years ago (that is disputed somewhat now). I would be surprised if some form of invertebrate is not very similar to something earlier, and if you include photosynthetic bacteria stromatolites found in australia that are very similar to fossils from 3.5 billion years ago.

 

[EgonSpengler]

The Coelacanth are famously "living fossils", having been considered to have evolved into roughly its current form approximately 400 million years ago (that is disputed somewhat now). I would be surprised if some form of invertebrate is not very similar to something earlier, and if you include photosynthetic bacteria stromatolites found in australia that are very similar to fossils from 3.5 billion years ago.

That might be stretching the definition of 'dinosaur' a little, though.

 

[tjs282]

The term basically means something that was alive during the time of the dinosaurs and superficially is unchanged.

Then sharks. And crocodiles (etc.), IIRC.

I have spoken.

 

[Lexicus]

Wikipedia says alligators are 38 million years old and crocodiles are 55 million years old. I'm surprised gators aren't the older species, because those are the ones that can survive freezing weather. I would've thought that feature contributed to the family of species surviving the asteroid impact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocodilia
Crocodilia (or Crocodylia, both /krɒkəˈdɪliə/) is an order of mostly large, predatory, semiaquatic reptiles, known as crocodilians. They first appeared 95 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous period (Cenomanian stage) and are the closest living relatives of birds, as the two groups are the only known survivors of the Archosauria. Members of the order's total group, the clade Pseudosuchia, appeared about 250 million years ago in the Early Triassic period, and diversified during the Mesozoic era. The order Crocodilia includes the true crocodiles (family Crocodylidae), the alligators and caimans (family Alligatoridae), and the gharial and false gharial (family Gavialidae). Although the term 'crocodiles' is sometimes used to refer to all of these, crocodilians is a less ambiguous vernacular term for members of this group.

However judging from this article I'm not sure how similar to ancient crocodilians modern crocodiles and alligators are.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Man, I hate it when I get a false gharial. Fools me every time.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Not trying to bring religion into it, but interesting, like 'Why are there adult T"Rex remains/bones but no young T'Rex remains?'

The video was interesting, but when you get to the last 5 minutes or so, actual science leaves the room. He talks about geologic time periods (Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous) and then says that the sediment layers for each were all laid down at the same time. His evidence is that particular sandstone layers imply water flow and therefore a world wide flood was responsible for the end of the dinosaurs and not an impact. Geologic time is ignored. He does not explain how or why all the Triassic fossils are below the Jurassic and Cretaceous if they all lived at the same time. The biggest problem is that he ignores an enormous amount of information and only uses very selected data that can be used to point in the direction he wants to drive the conversation. Here is a biblical explanation to dispute the impact theory. You will note that it uses volcanoes during the world wide flood to explain the spread of iridium. Of course, there is no mention of volcanoes in the Bible or just exactly how a world wide flood that took 150 days to reach its peak height/depth? of 17,000 feet and then another 150 days to recede would affect world wide volcanoes. Belief in Genesis is a religious undertaking. Trying to reconcile that belief with science is an impossible task.

A third problem is that there is too much iridium to fit with the theory. Although asteroids do have iridium in them, they do not normally spread out the iridium upon impact. (In other words, areas around impacts are not iridium-enriched.) In at least one case, the iridium would have taken half a million years to cover the earth, by evolutionary counting.

Far more likely is that the iridium enrichment came from volcanic activity, not outer space. Volcanoes do produce iridium and spread it out.
There is another possibility, ignored in secular science journals. While the impact theory admits the possibility of a global catastrophe resulting from an asteroid or comet, the Bible describes a very different global catastrophe that could have caused the “K-T extinction event”—the worldwide Flood of Genesis 6–9.

The Bible says that “all fountains of the great deep were broken up” (Genesis 7:11). The breakup of the earth’s crust would certainly have caused volcanoes on an unprecedented scale during the Flood, explaining the iridium in the K-T boundary. The bulk of the world’s fossils would have formed as a result of this catastrophe.

While pairs of every kind of dinosaur survived the Flood on board the Ark, it appears that their population never grew large in the new world. Like so many other kinds of animals, their small populations finally went extinct for a variety of reasons typical of many animals, including climate changes, diseases, decrease in food supply, and humans.

https://answersingenesis.org/dinosaurs/extinction/dinosaur-killer/

 

[Zardnaar]

There's also Deccan fire traps and the 3 metre gap.

Arguements that the dinosaurs already extinct when asteroid hit. I think they've since found a few remains in the 3 metre gap.

 

[warpus]

When I was at the War Museum in Auckland, one entire floor of the museum was dedicated to the flora & fauna of the country, from what I remember. No idea why something like that was in a war museum, but that's beside the point. There was this one cool room I remember that had all these giant birds, one was just.. super giant. The size of 3 humans maybe? They had a giant skeleton thing up, it looked more like a dinosaur skeleton than a large chicken skeleton or anything bird related.

That is one of the things unique to New Zealand, these large birds evolved there and survived due to a lack of natural predators. From what I remember there even weren't any mammal predators on the islands at all, until the Europeans arrived and brought some with them. It's somewhat interesting to compare NZ to Australia in this regard. It seems that every other animal in Australia can kill you just by looking at you.. whereas in New Zealand the most dangerous animal is a smart parrot that can rip your car apart. But there are no animals there that can hurt a human (unless there's something now that those evil Europeans brought over)

But yeah, those large bird things in that museum were super interesting.

 

[Birdjaguar]

They were Moa birds.

 

[Hrothbern]

They were Moa birds.

And from wiki: with the Haast's Eagle preying on them. the biggest eagle ever.
After humans killed the Moa birds the Haast's Eagle became extinct around 1400 from lack of food.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haast's_eagle

 

[Zardnaar]

And from wiki: with the Haast's Eagle preying on them. the biggest eagle ever.
After humans killed the Mao birds the Haast's Eagle became extinct around 1400 from lack of food.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haast's_eagle

I put that link in the OP.

Only mammal here is a native bat. It's why a lot of birds here don't fly.

The bird that can destroy a car is the Kea.

NZs not good for fossils comparatively but they have since found vertibrae of titanosaurs.

Some theories are that patches of the earth survived better. NZ ended up with an avian ecosystem and living fossils and plants that survived the meteor.

Antarctica would be next bet.

That first link mentioned something about 5 species perhaps surving another million years.

I'm wondering if anyone else knows anything. Birds are dinosaurs and NZ had Avian ecosystem so...

 

[Birdjaguar]

I put that link in the OP.

... That first link mentioned something about 5 species perhaps surving another million years.

The link in the article you posted in the OP takes one to a paper by Jeffrey Stilwell about finding pre impact dinosaur fossils on the Chatham Islands and how it looks like when NZ separated from Gondwana 80 mya, NZ was likely connected to the Chatham Islands and it could have been a refuge for Cretaceous dinos post impact. No post impact fossils yet though.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

It may not quite be a last dinosaur as much as any other bird, but from South America is the hoatzin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoatzin

 

[GenMarshall]

I know but wondering about non Avians.

What about Crocodiles and Alligators?

 

[Zardnaar]

Cast of the Haast Eagle foot. Probably went extinct fairly quickly once Maori arrived.

Their legends include tales of giant birds attacking them from the sky.

What about Crocodiles and Alligators?

Not dinosaurs. Other species survived. Tuatara, Horseshoe crabs, crocodilians, sharks some plants etc.